Chicago near bottom for black employment, income equality

Chicago ranks 65th out of 70 metro areas for employment equality for blacks and 62nd out of 70 for income equality, according to the 40th annual State of Black America report, published yesterday by the National Urban League.

Unemployment for blacks in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin area stands at 18.6 percent, compared with 5.8 percent for whites. Unemployment for blacks in the metro area that ranks first, Providence-Warwick, R.I., is 9.9 percent, compared with 6.8 percent for whites.

Black households in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin area have a median income of $35,169, versus $74,759 for whites. By contrast, black households in the city that ranks first, Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., have a median income of $46,438, with $60,668 for whites. That means in that area, black households' median income is 76.5 percent that of white households; in Chicago, it's 47 percent.

“Chicago is in a crisis, a perfect storm of inequities,” says Shari Runner, president and CEO of the Chicago Urban League. The unemployment rates for blacks ages 20 to 24 is 47 percent, and for 16- to 19-year-olds it's 88 percent.

“We are not creating a pipeline of people prepared to work in the jobs available in the city,” Runner says. “We have not done anything to fix the problem.”

In early July, the Chicago Urban League plans to release a 10-year plan to improve the 19 Chicago communities in which, according to its research, more than 40 percent of the residents live below the poverty line. The top five of those communities are Austin, West Garfield Park, East Garfield Park, Douglas and Oakland.

Runner also said that the Chicago Urban League supports the National Urban League's Main Street Marshall Plan, unveiled yesterday at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The plan calls for a five-year, $1 trillion investment in, among other things, early childhood education, expansion of youth summer job programs and investment in the urban infrastructure.

For Chicago, the youth employment program would do the most good, Runner says. “Having a job that is part of the normal economy impacts a lot of things right away,” she says.

Nationally, the State of Black America report measures equality in five segments: economics, health, education, social justice and civic engagement. The 2016 report pegs the equality of black America at 72.2 percent that of whites, compared with 72 percent for 2015.

“There is good news and bad news,” Runner says. “We have an opportunity now to have a conversation on how to change things, but it can't be a conversation and no further action.”